


As cold as steel

by missbeifong



Series: Book of Shadows [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Blood and Injury, Family Issues, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25210474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbeifong/pseuds/missbeifong
Summary: Lin Beifong's life has always seemed simple, but reality hides something darker.Like every night, Lin has to fight the toughest of her battles: she has to face her own demons.
Series: Book of Shadows [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827475
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	As cold as steel

A soft rain fell in Republic City. The raindrops wet the streets, they stuck to the windows of the buildings, contemplating the lives of their inhabitants. The city had been covered in gray tones that day, getting only the notes of color through the pale green eyes of one of its inhabitants

Sad was the day, although for Lin Beifong they were always like that.

The police chief was sitting at the table in her office, closely watching the reports of one of the latest cases. Lin didn't have to, it wasn't necessary. She knew she could trust her officers, but a part of her always called her to check. ‘Better to make sure that everything is in order…’ she used to say to herself, but the reality was very different.

The woman spent long hours in her office, reviewing each case, each point and each comma of all the reports. Again and again. Again and again. Until the lights in the building began to dim, realizing once again that she had lost track of time and therefore hours that she could have enjoyed doing other things...

But what was she going to do if it wasn't work? There was nothing to entertain her, there was nothing she really liked to do in her spare time. But the correct thing would be to say that she didn’t allow herself freedom, because she didn’t want, under any circumstances, that her mind began to work on her deepest and darkest thoughts. She had enough of her nightmares visiting her in the dead of night, when only the stars and the moon witnessed her misfortune.

Today it seemed that nothing was going to change in her life.

The chief put the folder of a robbery report in a small local store and ran her hands over her face for a few seconds, then let out a light sigh. Lin settled into her seat better, reclining, losing her sight at an undetermined point in her office. She shook her head, looked around, and realized something she hadn't seen until now: there was nothing. Not a photo, not a sign that could tell this was her own office. Nothing. There was no mark that someone had given their personal touch to their workplace. She never dared put anything on it.

‘Because you have nothing, Lin. Just the emptiness of your soul to match your office…’

She shook her head and looked back at the report, clearing her throat.

The assailant had attacked a family that was engaged in selling fish and had wounded the woman, although luckily nothing serious. Lin looked at the photo of the dark-haired woman's wounds, just having a few scratches on her face and nothing else. She couldn’t avoid running a few fingers, very gently, through the photo of that woman, and then do the same with the wounds on her own face. The image of that cable touching her face unexpectedly, the feel of the flesh opening, the warmth of the blood running down her cheek, the desperate cry for having lost confidence suddenly come back to her mind.

Lin closed her eyes, clenched her jaw. She let out a long sigh accompanied by tears of sadness. She felt her stomach spin without warning, causing unpleasant nausea. Rebellious tears rip her skin mercilessly, opening paths that a long time ago no one had traveled. The burden on her chest was so bad that it prevented her from breathing easily, but she told herself that she couldn’t be overcome so easily, strangely with the voice of her own mother. She opened her eyes again and tried to compose herself.

The building's lights broke her moment of bravery, as they went out without warning. It had to be too late now, past midnight.

Another sigh came back out of her mouth, then she gently wiped away the tears that still fell on her skin. Lin closed the dossier and locked it on her table, then got up and put her chair in place. She checked that everything in her office was in place, returning to the same image as before:

Nothing, there was nothing.

She walked through the hallways while putting on her coat, listening only to the noise of her own footsteps cutting off the tranquility and the sound of rain in the distance.

Because it seemed that time was showing the wounds of her soul.

She finally left the building and decided to walk in the rain to her house. ‘You should have taken an umbrella, Lin... You just can’t do anything right, huh?…’ Again, her voice, strangely her mother's, spoke to her again. Strangely, though she knew it wasn't so much.

Her mother had been a benchmark for her and it was no wonder that Lin thought she had to do everything perfectly in order to reach her… Even if she did what she did, Lin knew it would never be enough. She would never catch up to the great Toph Beifong, first person to gain control over metal, founder of Metalbending Police Force, member of the Avatar Aang team and one of the people who put that stupid hundred-year war to an end. Who was she next to her? No one, absolutely no one. Just an absurd shadow, a small echo of what someone might be expected of her.

She was really no one, no matter how hard she tried to prove otherwise.

Lin shook her head, sighed again. She tried to walk home without realizing anything, but she couldn't help but look at the few lights that are on at that hour. The chief saw the silhouette of a woman feeding a baby, a family talking around a table, a couple kissing in the distance... And each and every one of those images stabbed at Lin's heart like daggers made of the purest steel.

The woman looked down at the ground and walked faster, wishing she could get home once and for all, as the memories of what she may have once had come back to her mind and Lin didn’t wish anyone to see the tears fall from her eyes, even if she knew that the rain could hide them. She was not going to be weak in public... Lin just had enough.

‘You already did it once, Lin... do you remember?’ Now it was her sister's voice in her mind, giving the last blow of metal to her heart.

After several minutes of walking, after several attempts to leave the past behind on the streets, Lin managed to get home. She closed the door quickly, rested her forehead against the wood while gripping the knob with all her strength. The woman wished with all her might that the demon of the past had not pierced it, but she knew that it was waiting sitting on the edge of her bed.

‘You can't run away from us, Lin…’ The voice grew darker, mixing the voice of her mother and sister.

She walked away from the door, looking at it in horror.

"It's not real..." she said to herself as she closed her eyes to gather strength while taking a deep breath.

Lin took off her coat and hung it aside to dry, since the soft rain had completely wet her. The woman wished she had the power to control the water to be able to remove the drops of that sad rain. ‘But you have the gift of Metalbending, isn't it enough? Wasn’t I enough, Lin? Am I never going to be enough for you?’

She turned in a hurry and looked around, realizing again what was happening in her own office: nothing, she had absolutely nothing in that place she called home... ‘But I really can't call this home... It's been a long time since I had one... I don't have one anymore, I won't have one for the rest of my life...’.

Rebellious tears fell down her face again, mixing with the raindrops that inhabited her skin. Lin tried to dry them, but it was useless. The sadness of being mixed with that of the world without permission as it pierced his skin, creating a growing void.

Lin hit the wall and felt a slight pain in her arm. She closed her eyes to feel it, because she was tired of knowing the sadness in that place she called home. It was the only thing that reminded her that she was alive and not dead inside.

The chief walked to the bathroom, where she decided to take a hot shower before going to sleep. She dropped her uniform to the ground, dropped the metal walls she had been building for years for a few minutes. Increasingly higher, harder, thicker walls. Walls that no one dared to break, that no one wanted to jump. Walls that prevented Lin from making herself known to the world.

Walls that were the prison of her own existence.

She felt the hot water on her skin, leaving behind the coldness that covered her. She remembered, for the first time all day, that there is heat and that she, even in that way, can feel it... 'Because otherwise you can't, right? You are a bitter woman that nobody loves for one night or for a second... You weren’t enough for Tenzin, remember? And you won’t be for anyone else in the years that you have left... '.

Lin hit the wall again, voices in her head, echoing over all of her little sister. More metal daggers in her heart, more images from the past came to her mind. Pain, so much pain, because the person she had loved decided to leave her for someone else... And anger, a lot, for not being able to be better, for not having given everything to avoid that fateful moment... For not being enough once again.

She quickly left the water and looked in the mirror after drying her hair a little. It was getting grayer, it was less and less full of life... And the only thing that it had accumulated during all those years was pain and anger, nothing more. She untangles her hair slowly, trying to focus on that activity and not on the battle going on in her head.

“Old hair for an older person. Old hair for someone who is broken inside... Not even your own body loves you, Lin. Isn't it painful? You cannot bear it yourself... “. She frowned, using the brush with a bit of anger in her hair.

“It’s that no one can bear her, mother... No one, not her own mother, not her own sister. Not her own body…”.

She could see in the mirror that, as those words rang in her mind, the figures of her mother and sister, as she had last seen them many years ago, appeared on either side of her. They judged her harshly. They laughed at her for being the biggest failure that could have happened to the Beifong family.

"What's wrong, big sister?" Lin stopped and looked at them through the mirror, her face showing the fear and anguish that her soul felt. She didn't want to face that, she was helpless.

“Am I lying? You know I’m not, because you just have to look at how your home is... Empty, lifeless, because nobody loves you enough to leave their mark in a place like this…”

The image of her sister seemed to move behind her to stand next to her mother, the great Toph Beifong. She hugged her from behind and her mother responded by lovingly touching one of her arms. When was the last time her mother did something like that to her?

"Never..." It seemed that she had read her mind, but the truth was that they had never left it. “You're never going to have something like that, Lin... And do you know why? Because you are the biggest mistake your father and I made... You know? He knew, from the first moment, that you weren't going to achieve anything, that it wouldn't be worth staying by your side…” She laughed lightly. “How do you pretend to have a home if you are never going to be good enough? How do you pretend someone loves you if not even your own father loved you, even when he abandoned you as soon as he had the chance?"

Rage and pain consumed her again. The brush fell to the ground, the tears disappeared in the emptiness of time. Her hand, almost without thinking, moved and formed a fist, which hit with all her force the glass that formed the mirror. The cracks appeared soon, just like in her soul. The blood started to flow, the hand started to hurt. Their laughter began to sound louder.

"Stupid girl..." Her mother's voice sounded disgusted, creating more and more wounds inside her.

Lin came out of the bathroom, hoping to get away from them, while her hand ached and blood gushed out of it. The laughter in the bathroom grew louder and the pain grew more intense. She quickly opened the closet and almost found it empty if it weren't for that white pajamas in one of the hanger. She pulled on it in a hurry, although she couldn't handle the buttons on the top.

More laughter, this time multiplied. She didn't know how to tell them apart anymore, although she really didn't want to. Why did she want to do it if she knew they were from all the people who knew her? Why go through that unnecessary suffering?

"To feel that you are alive, big sister... To see that the only thing you are worth is that people laugh at you..."

She slammed the door hard, but there wasn't much success, because this knock ended up cracking it.

"You break everything you touch, Lin... don't you learn? Hasn't everything I've taught you been helpful? Can't you be like your little sister?" Lin looked around and found the same image as always: nothing, emptiness, loneliness.

There was only them and the mocking laugh that they didn't want to leave, that they didn't want to leave her alone.

"Stop it now!" She ordered, but it didn't work.

"Do you really think you can give orders to the great Toph Beifong? Do you really think that someone like you, filthy rat, can talk to one of the best people in the world?"

"You haven't learned anything, big sister..."

"And that's why we're never going to leave, Lin... Because you still have to learn from your filth, from your loneliness, from your agony..."

"From your dirty existence..."

Slowly, Lin stepped back, trying to get away from those voices. But she wasn't going to be able, because all that was inside her. As much as she wanted to, they weren't going to leave her. Not now, not ever. They would be with her until the end of her days in that dirty world, on that dirty planet…

The woman crashed into the wall, feeling the pain in her hand again as she touched it. The hot blood continued to flow, the crystals continued to cut him. But she didn't care, she just wanted to hide from everything. She slid down the wall, sitting on the floor. The tears of pain, not from the wound on her hand, but from the soul, continued to flow through her being.

An image of a woman in a police uniform appears in front of her. Dark hair, pale green eyes, two wounds on one cheek. She smiled haughtily at the image she was seeing.

"You are pathetic even when you cry, dear... You don't know how to do anything right..." The figure crossed her arms and looked at her with the same haughty smile. "You will never learn that there is only you and me and no one else... We only have each other, isn't it nice?" A laugh came from her lips, as cold as ice itself. The woman started walking towards her, like every night.

Lin ended up shrugging slowly, hugging her legs in a moment, hiding her face between her knees later. She covered her head to try to stop listening to that laugh. But she knew that this would last forever, that she would end up passing any barrier that stood between them.

She just wanted the hours of darkness to pass quickly, because with the first rays of the sun she could hide under the layers of metal and pretend that nothing had happened. She just wanted the sun to come up to go to work and play the role she had been playing all her life: that of a bitter woman who only thinks of herself. Because Lin just wanted to be as cold as steel.


End file.
